Time Flies
by Simple-Minded Idiot
Summary: Love is such a strange concept, isn't it? You can't duplicate love. You can't repeat love. It happens just once. In just one moment. And after that... it's all gone. As if it's never been there.


If I'm correct, today should be Essy-Effy's birthday (pardon me if I got the name wrong). So... Happy Birthday SF! I do hope that you'll be able to see this...

I come again with birthday!fic. Do I feel happy that classes were canceled due to a storm.

* * *

"What did you want to say to me?" the blond asked, a hint of impatience in his voice. 

It was cold up there in the rooftop. Sasuke didn't know why he had chosen this place of all the places out there to...

"I, well, I think that I'm... starting to–" he started to say.

His hands, which were balled into fists and put inside his jacket's pockets, were shaking and sweating so much that it seemed as if he was going sent to a butcher house or he was the next one in the death line.

Despite the fact that he was an antisocial jerk, that did not mean that he was incapable of feeling or knowing love. Well, sure, it had been ages since he'd felt the same, but it was rather possible for him to bring these feelings back to the surface.

He pursed his lips and dug his fingers harder into his palms to calm himself and to urge himself to continue.

He really was doing this wasn't he? He was spilling out his heart to the person who hated him with a passion.

"I think that I'm starting to fall in love... love with you," he finished lamely.

He licked his lips that had suddenly turned dry.

"I hate you, you ass," Naruto growled. "You're playing with me, aren't you?! I hate hate _hate_ people like you!"

Sasuke gulped. He then chortled before he turned around. He squeezed his eyes tight before he began to walk away. He kept walking even as he heard Naruto angrily screaming at his back.

"I guess that it's alright. I never expected a better answer than that," he murmured. "I've been such a fool indeed."

* * *

Uzumaki Naruto wasn't really your run-of-the-mill high school senior that liked fooling around most of the time due to the fact that he was trying to escape the harshness of memorizing formulas and historical figures. Okay, so maybe he was that, but he was _more_ than just that.

For starters, he could travel through time. He didn't know how or why, he just did. Maybe that short briefing of his supposed special _power_ by his grandmother Tsunade helped. At first, he didn't believe it – would any person believe it at first? – but then, well, _things_ happened and he was forced to admit the surreal reality he was living in.

Time traveling was rather cool though.

He sometimes went back in time to relive the moments that he liked. In fact, right now, he was reliving one of those moments.

He was eating ramen with his good pals Kiba and Shikamaru. Kiba had left for a new city the day after that one while Shikamaru would only spend two more weeks in their own city before he left for college overseas.

Naruto sorely missed them and had chosen to go back to that particular moment every now and then.

By now, everything that happened then was in his mind. Rather, he had burned them into his memory. Though he would very much like it if the people he was missing was with him in the present.

He and Kiba were on their fifth ramen bowl, which would be Kiba's last, while Shikamaru was taking his time in drinking the soup from his pork ramen.

Then there was something unexpected that happened.

Someone parted the red cloth of the ramen stand and sat beside Kiba.

"Beef ramen, please," the newcomer said.

Naruto blinked owlishly, ramen noodles forgotten on his open mouth. And who was... this person? Had he, Uzumaki Naruto, unknowingly messed up the time space continuum? Dear lord. Tsunade was going to kill him. Wait! Perhaps she would torture him _and then_ kill him. That would be so much like that old hag, too.

* * *

Later on, Naruto had been introduced to the Ramen Stranger by Tsunade herself. The guy was Uchiha Sasuke. Someone who came from the future. A time cop of sorts. He was sent here to catch certain bandits that had been reported to have escaped to that time.

Naruto thought that it was a pretty cool job. Sasuke had said that Naruto would be older than sixty by the time that there was a profession or an occupation that would deal with time jumping misadventures. And old people weren't allowed jobs that were _as cool_ – and he had said this mockingly, too – as those.

Of course, Naruto flipped Sasuke off.

Sasuke merely smirked as Tsunade bonked Naruto on the head with her fist.

For three months, things would be like that. Sasuke would be polite with everyone except Naruto, Tsunade would always berate Naruto or administer righteous vengeance, and Naruto would always end up having the blunt end of the whole deal, whatever it might be.

Well, sure it was rather unfair for the blond boy, but it was – as odd as _it_ may be – something like... family. Of course, he would never admit that having Sasuke around felt as if his and Tsunade's little dysfunctional family was more than complete.

But there was just that one thing that he couldn't grasp about having the brunet around.

So perhaps that was why Naruto deemed that he hated Sasuke for all that the boy was worth. Because he really couldn't understand what he thought about Sasuke.

* * *

Months soon passed by. Before anyone knew it, it had been a year since then. A year since Naruto last used his time-jumping abilities to reenact that moment with Kiba and Shikamaru.

And then there was he and Sasuke on the rooftop with Sasuke looking as if he was going to say something that would change their lives. It did.

Naruto was just confused as always. He shouted, he screamed. Still didn't mean that he knew what he was doing. He just needed to do something. Anyway, it was more than likely that Sasuke had been playing with him. He hated people who gave out fake love confessions.

Love like the one Sasuke had been talking about wasn't something that was given out in such a carefree manner. Love like that just wasn't toyed with. At least that was how Naruto saw it. He would probably see it in that way for the rest of his life.

So why was it – when he was trying to defend the honor of Love and all – that he felt _hurt_?

* * *

Before _they_ knew it, it was time for Sasuke to go. And Naruto had felt that longing ringing in his heart. It was just like on the rooftop.

The time portal was like a giant mirror. Except the mirror surface didn't look that solid. It was more of a silvery, with a dash of this color and that, substance that would have ripples on it every now and then. Sasuke's behind was like a silhouette and his shadow was a large, looming monster. Naruto had never been so afraid of a shadow like that time.

"Hey, teme," he said.

Sasuke looked at Naruto from his shoulder.

"I don't really hate you, you know," Naruto said, looking at Sasuke with a grin on his face.

Sasuke softly smiled as he turned his head to look at the giant portal.

"I don't, too," he said.

He walked past the silvery substance.

"Job well done, Uchiha-kun!" a cheerful, pink-haired woman exclaimed. "After you finish your mission report, make sure to go to the chief straight away."

"But then, I guess, you never figured that out on your own," he murmured before he nodded at the woman.

God, Naruto felt like an idiot. Befitting indeed of the names _dobe_ and _usuratonkachi_.

* * *

Here he was again, facing Sasuke at the rooftop.

"What did you want to say to me?" he asked, trying his very best to put a hint of impatience in his voice like he had all those months ago. Like he had right now.

Dealing with time sentences when one was messing around with time and space was hard.

"I, well," Sasuke started in the same fashion he had back then.

Naruto felt hope rise in him. He needed... he needed to hear those words. Then maybe he could fix it all. Not maybe and certainly not could. He _would_ fix it all.

"I... Naruto," Sasuke said, "let's meet again in the future."

Things weren't supposed to go like that. Not at all. Naruto had to school his features to not show the disappointment and the anger and the _everything_ that he felt at that moment. He had never been one for controlling his emotions.

He cracked a smile. He was very sure that it didn't look at bright as he usually made his smiles.

"Let's," he said.

_Carpe diem_. That was what he should've done all those months ago.

* * *

"Sir," Sasuke said before he bowed.

He then put his mission report, which was in the form of one of those hologram notebooks, on his superior's table.

"I hate you, Uchiha," his superior's voice rang out.

"With all due respect, sir, what do you mean by that?" Sasuke asked, truly puzzled by his superior's odd behavior.

His superior. The man was certainly mysterious. Sasuke had never seen him before since he was always looking out his window, on that large, black armchair of his with, obviously enough, his back turned on the people.

Soon enough, the big black armchair began to turn around slowly. Then Sasuke blinked. No way. There was just _no way_.

"Do... be...?"

A more mature-looking Uzumaki Naruto was seated on that chair. A Naruto with the same old mischievous grin that Sasuke had almost always seen him don back in the days.

"You lied to me! You told me that I'd be sixty or something by the time this job came around!" Naruto exclaimed. All in good jesting of course. "And I'm just... thirty-five or something!"

"I guess that I was a bit wrong with my calculations," Sasuke said, a smile threatening to pop up on his face.

* * *

So then, I've finally done what I'd wanted to write for a while! Thank you for reading through this. Comments (about anything and everything) will be much appreciated. 


End file.
